It’s happened. I stayed mostly current on my book reviews for the summer and had to write only three more before posting this. Go me.
As usual, I’m reviewing only the books I like unless I have strong opinions about a book I dislike.
Note: I’ve tried to maintain close relationships between characters in their real life counterparts, but the romantic ones in Hades are obviously not romantic between coworkers. Still, they hint at some level of closeness, past or present. Also, if you haven’t played Hades, you should play it, but more important to this post, there are game spoilers.
In March 2024, I had worked on my technical writing team for almost two and a half years. I had just been promoted within my role. I had just launched a major initiative that people had been asking for… since before I started at that company. I was respected, well-paid, and had great coworkers, including a manager I may follow if they ever leave. Everyone in my personal life thought I was living the dream.
Why would I want to give that up?
Guess what, dear readers: with this post going up, I’ve finally cleared my book reviews. Now let’s see if I can keep this up.
As usual, I’m only talking about the books I like unless I really have something specific to say about a book I dislike.
Remember last time when I thought I had been working on a book review post for awhile but it turned out I had posted one over a year ago? Well, the same thing happened again, but to a less extreme extent. I do have a reason besides forgetting–approaching burnout! Of the work variety, not (just) the existential kind that being a person in America is leading to right now. More on that in a future post.
Like last time, I’m including only the best/most memorable books in order to avoid scope creep, so these books are roughly from October 2024 to February 2025. I’m also starting the next round of book reviews now in the hopes of getting the next round up sooner and maybe even writing them sooner and not six months later? A girl can dream.
It’s no secret that I’m not a fan of Go Battle League. In early seasons I would play until getting to rank 20 and then Ace, and then call it a season.
Then Pokemon Go introduced the season-long Go Battle League research that provided a raid-free way to get rare candy XL for every 100 wins, and that got me to do more battles for the rare XL candy. I’d sometimes get to expert within those 500 battles but never could make that last push for legend even after continuing to play. At a certain point it became clear that I should put down the game for my sanity instead of malding my way back down to Ace.
During the season of Shared Skies (summer 2024) I decided to liven things up in the early ranks, with the knowledge that it was likely to screw up my entering elo. No, I didn’t do auto rekt. I did the GBL Nuzlocke-ish challenge.